Maisha Palmer, formerly an assistant director of championships at the NCAA and a former scholar-athlete at Saint Joseph's University, was named associate director of athletics and senior woman administrator at Bucknell in the fall of 2010, and she has since been eleveated to senior associate AD. In addition to her duties at the NCAA, Palmer also has Division I athletics administration experience at Rutgers and Vanderbilt.
At Bucknell, Palmer is a key member of the department's leadership team and serves as the University's Title IX coordinator while overseeing many of the department's student-athlete welfare priorities including gender equity and minority opportunity initiatives. In addition, she has a sport supervisory role and is an important liaison with the Bucknell faculty and deans as well as with the offices of compliance services, admissions and financial aid.
Palmer came to Bucknell from the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis, where she had served as an assistant director of championships since 2008. In that role she worked with individual coaches and administrators, coaching bodies, sport committees and site hosts for various NCAA Championship events. Palmer was also the sport leader for swimming and diving, providing direction to NCAA staff on issues pertaining to that sport, and she was a member of the USA Swimming and USA Diving Board of Directors.
Prior to her stint at the NCAA, Palmer spent three years at Rutgers, where she was an athletic academic advisor and tutoring coordinator. In that capacity she served as an advisor to student-athletes while communicating with faculty and deans on academic and social issues. Palmer monitored student-athletes' academic progress and coordinated tutoring when necessary. She also served as Rutgers' CHAMPS/Life Skills and Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) advisor, while also sitting on the Rutgers Diversity Council, RU Safe and the Bias Prevention, LGBT and Judicial Affairs committees. While at Rutgers, Palmer also served on the NCAA Division I Track and Field Committee and the Big East Cross Country and Track and Field Committee.
In 2004-05, Palmer served as academic counselor for student-athletes at Vanderbilt, where she worked closely with the football and men's basketball programs.
Palmer is a 2000 graduate of Saint Joseph's, where she captained the track and field team and earned an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship based on her contributions both on the track and in the classroom. She later spent three seasons as an assistant track and field coach at Saint Joe's while also teaching sixth-grade social studies and science at the Waldron Mercy Academy in Merion, Pa.
In 2005, Palmer received her master's of education degree in sport and recreation administration from Temple University.
Palmer is a member of the National Association of Collegiate Women's Athletic Administrators (NACWAA) and the National Leadership Institute for Ethnic Minority Females.
